Linguistic humility is always in order

The last Sunday night I spent in Pittsburgh this Christmas found me at the McDonald’s where my cousin once worked, flaunting to Mother Nature that even though she insisted upon setting her thermostat at a level that could charitably be described as frigid, I would have no problem drinking a frozen caramel frappe. My parents had coupons, expiring that night, that granted us two frappes and two mochas for the price of one frappe and one mocha and the ten minutes it took for the guy behind the counter to understand what we wanted and how to make it.

Our frappes looked pretty much like this, except fluorescently lit, without the caramel, chocolate, and coffee beans props, with an irregularly-patterned and only half-hearted drizzle of syrup on top, and placed on a beige table that was hideous even back in its birthtime of the 70s.

There we were, the seven of us — if one accepts the argument that their long development makes the drinks full characters in this story — when an eighth character appeared to offer us his newspaper as he left. We readily accepted, looking for any excuse to linger away from the cold of the outdoors (and our house, where we save money by relying primarily on warm feelings and layers of sweaters to prevent hypothermia)

Finding two crosswords in the paper, we divided them; I taking one, and my parents sharing the other. We switched off on occasion, with each switch bringing another admonishment from my dad for me and my mother’s habit of neglecting to cross out clues as we fill them in. I tried to explain our negligence as a result of our finely-tuned crosswording minds: having only pens, we hesitated to commit to a word until we confirmed that another connecting word or two fit the first. As a result, we tended to have word cascades, where several clues came together at once, and it was difficult to find all of them to mark off. I even coined a phrase for it: “The spirit catches you, and you fill in.” (My conscience is forcing me to reveal that I coined this phrase only now, making it significantly less clever than it would have been had I coined it at the time.)

After one of the exchanges, I noticed that I now had enough letters to figure out a seven-letter word that would spring me from the prison of the upper-left corner. “Ersatz frisbees”, read the clue, and I had P I E _ _ _ _. Pie tins, of course. I filled it in, only to find a few minutes later that something was wrong. For a “quick trip”, I was getting jiunt, instead of the obviously correct jaunt. But that would mean that ersatz frisbess were pie tans, and that was clearly impossible. Then I realized that “don’t take no for an answer” also made more sense as press than tress, I realized that the crossword constructor was calling them pie pans, a phrase I’d never seemed to have heard in my life.

So I, in an allusion to my younger years in Pittsburgh, whined to my parents. “Pie pans?”, I asked incredulously, “What a huckster, trying to make this crossword more difficult by intentionally using the wrong word. It’s pie tins, right?” And my parents, no longer at an age where they had to pretend that their son was always right, said, “Maybe that’s how they say it where they’re from.”

I felt like Medusa gazing into a mirror, or whoever it was who was hoist by his own petard. I was gobsmacked. I exist on the Internet as a set of words lambasting others for doing what I just did — calling someone a lunkhead for having done nothing more than using the form most common in their dialect. I stewed for a second, and then muttered something about how this was totally different, because in a crossword you ought to stick to the more standard form, and everyone calls it a pie tin. My parents were too busy arguing over whether 99-Down really needed to have been crossed out to notice.

I had put this ugly episode out of my mind until this morning, when I found myself idly thinking about baked goods and suddenly the matter popped right back up. I was gentler now, as we had answered every last clue in both of the crosswords, and so I could afford magnanimy toward the crosswords’ designers. I now regarded pie pans as a delightful little trick, tripping me up momentarily with its uncommon usage. So I figured I’d assess how devilish a trick it was by seeing how much rarer pie pans is than pie tins:

Oops.

The lesson: each of us is fluent not in English, but in an idiolect of English. When you encounter someone who deviates from the form of English you use, don’t be too quick to assume that it’s them, and not you, who deviate from Standard English. And never start complaining about it until you’ve checked the facts. I’m just offering this story as a reminder that even if you, like me, haughtily think that you never fall into this fallacy, you probably still do.

About The Blog

A lot of people make claims about what "good English" is. Much of what they say is flim-flam, and this blog aims to set the record straight. Its goal is to explain the motivations behind the real grammar of English and to debunk ill-founded claims about what is grammatical and what isn't. Somehow, this was enough to garner a favorable mention in the Wall Street Journal.

About Me

I'm Gabe Doyle, currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford University. Before that, I got a doctorate in linguistics from UC San Diego and a bachelor's in math from Princeton.

In my research, I look at how humans manage one of their greatest learning achievements: the acquisition of language. I build computational models of how people can learn language with cognitively-general processes and as few presuppositions as possible. Currently, I'm working on models for acquiring phonology and other constraint-based aspects of cognition.

I also examine how we can use large electronic resources, such as Twitter, to learn about how we speak to each other. Some of my recent work uses Twitter to map dialect regions in the United States.

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20 comments

Thanks for the reminder to stay humble (or at least check one’s facts before going ahead and lambasting). Interestingly, not only is “pie tins” not in my dialect, but I’d never heard it before; only “pie pans.”

On a somewhat related note, English was my former spouse’s second language. He’d completed A levels in England and a bachelor’s in Scotland before coming to the U.S. As an ESL teacher, I’d sometimes assume he hadn’t learned English correctly only to discover, sometimes years later, he’d merely been using a Briticism, e.g., “revise” material for a test instead of “review.”

I live in Cincinnati, but — My parents are from Pennsylvania. I grew up in Michigan. I am 53. I’m never sure which of those facts contributes most to my using a word for something that others around me would not. Did my parents call it that? Did my neighbors call it that in Michigan? Do people younger than me call it something different than I do, regardless of the geography?

The one that frustrates me most is the blank stares I get when I say “eaves trough.” To me, a “gutter” runs along the side of the street, not along the side of the roof.

And the state-mandated ID on an automobile is a “license plate,” not “tags.”

I would say “pie pan,” but would certainly not think twice if someone said “pie tin.” There’s also “pie plate,” but that would perhaps imply something more decorative than utilitarian.

If you don’t eat all the pie, be sure to cover it with “tin foil” and put it in the “ice box.”

I’m both an avid crossword puzzler and an avid not-yeller-at-people-over-stupid-language-issues, but I still find myself admonishing Will Shortz with a muttered “that’s not a word,” though I think in my case it’s more out of frustration than out of true disbelief.

I, too, use the “never cross the clues out” approach to crosswords, and I, too, do them in pen (at a minimum of one a day), but I have to tell you that a “finely-tuned crosswording mind” will never, ever put anything in that space beyond “P I E _ _ N S” until further evidence arises. I’ve run across that sort of clue too many times.

I’d like to point out, though (as the true reason for this comment), that the designer may very well have used TINS instead of PANS to trip up a hasty puzzler. That is, after all, the job of the designer.

(Which does nothing at all to explain the penchant for using “temper” and “anneal” as clues for each other.)

But I must admit that to me, a “pie tin” – which I’ve never heard – would conjure up a box for storing one in, not a dish for baking one in. (And a “pie plate” would be a fancy dish for serving one on…)

In doing a web search on the origin of the Frisbee flying disc, I find that term “pie tin” used consistently when referring to the original object that was tossed around — what was left when a pie from The Frisbie Pie Company was finished off. A blogger in Bridgeport, Conn., where the Frisbie bakery was located, discusses local history and uses the terms “pie tin” and “pie plate,” but never “pie pan.”

When you encounter someone who deviates from the form of cogitation you use, don’t be too quick to assume that it’s them, and not you, who deviate from Standard Cogitation. So your suggestion to be humble, based on your error, is fine–for you, but not necessarily for others.

Personally, growing up in Chicago and living in several other places about the country, I can not remember ever hearing “pie tins.” If I heard it said to be a Briticism, I would assume it to refer to what we call in the US might call pie cans although I have trouble imagining what that might actually look like on the super market shelves.

Being British I can’t contribute to the pie container debate, but I am interested in your use of the phrase ‘I taking one’. I’m pretty sure that in Britain the majority of people would now say ‘me taking one’ or ‘I’ plus finite verb form. Is this perhaps a BrE / AmE thing, or simply written vs spoken?

I think I fall into that trap more often than I’d like to admit. I consider myself to be fairly open-minded about language, but every now and then I hear something that I find myself feeling just goes beyond the bounds of what is acceptable. “All dialects are equal, but some dialects are more equal than others.” I know, I’m terrible. But realizing you have a problem is the first step toward recovery, right?

“We readily accepted, looking for any excuse to linger away from the cold of the outdoors (and our house, where we save money by relying primarily on warm feelings and layers of sweaters to prevent hypothermia)”

omg lol !!! i think you should quit your phD and do stand up comedy instead. you know it would be funner.